Is it really a break if you spend two weeks marking projects, labs, quizzes and journals? As well as unit planning, lesson planning, activity creating and making 7 weeks of note packages? I’d still say so, I got a lot of sleep!

My biggest challenge of the break was marking the Gallery Walk projects. I had a rubric set out so marking the content was not hard. The difficulty was dealing with the ample plagiarism that was rampant in one of the classes.

The students are in grade 10. I figured that plagiarism was understood at this level. Apparently not. I had to go through projects and highlight paragraph after paragraph that were clearly plagiarized, even if a word or two had been changed. I had told the class that they had to write things in their own words, and that they had to include in text citations for information that clearly was not their own. Some students tried in text citations and I gave them credit for trying. Other students copied and pasted full paragraphs and didn’t give any credit at all. It was difficult to mark. I knew that the topics were difficult, but I could clearly tell which groups took the time to understand the material and write in their own words and which did not. I also found it difficult to give marks to groups when one person committed all the plagiarism and the other did not. I had stressed this was a group project and if they had worked together, this would not have happened. It was difficult to come to terms with and I am not looking forward to the conversations I will be having with students tomorrow about their grades. I hope that these students reflect on their actions and will change their future habits. I will encourage students to discuss their actions with me, but academic dishonesty is academic dishonesty and I will not be offering “second chances” for them to redeem themselves. I am still undecided about students who had their projects “sabotaged” by their partners, but I am eager to collaborate with other teachers on what I can do. I’ll keep you updated on how this unfolds!

I have thought of ways to reduce plagiarism in this project in the future. Instead of having written portions, students will only present posters with pictures and key words and will have to learn their topic and present it. This would eliminate plagiarism and would ensure that students are learning their topic rather than copying and memorizing. A large part of their mark would be answering my questions which is something that they cannot rehearse. In any other project or assignment, I will always strongly stress academic dishonesty now and will indicate the consequences of not receiving a passing mark. I will also let them know that I am the teacher that will search sentences that I do not think belongs to them and will find their plagiarism. I hope that this will deter students from such dishonesty in the future.